Clarify This
by Bainaku
Summary: "Oh nuts, she sounds almost thoughtful. When Marceline tries to be thoughtful, people usually end up maimed."


**A/N: **Written for **bluefactories** on Tumblr because hot _damn_, it's her birthday!

I hope it's great, babes—your day, not the fic. Although I also hope you like the fic too. =)

**Rating: **T

**Words: **3,078

* * *

**CLARIFY THIS**

* * *

The phone rings.

Bubblegum fumbles for it, drops the receiver, and yelps out, "Truffles!" as it skitters beneath her bureau. She lunges after it. Her knees scrape the carpet; her temple bonks an open drawer and the cord tangles in her hair. "_Truffles!_" she curses again, plumbing the depths under the bureau for the phone. When she finally manages to fish it from the sea of shadows and dust, familiar tinny laughter is pouring from the earpiece. Despite that Bubblegum's first instinct is to blow a raspberry at the caller, her diplomatic training stifles the urge. Mostly.

Bubblegum fits the fuzz-specked speaker to her ear and sighs, "What do you want, Marceline?"

"Well _guten abend _to you too, Princess," Marceline's voice purrs. "What did I interrupt over there? A dance lesson? You sounded _preoccupied_—"

"Oh hush up. I dropped the phone." Bubblegum plops down on her vanity's bench, eyeing doubtfully her reflection in the mirror. "I messed up my hair," she relates to her caller, "and it's all your fault. What have you got to say for yourself, Marceline?"

The vampire queen makes a sound that suspiciously resembles a fart. "Get over it."

"It took me _hours_ of _painstaking preparation _to—"

"Uh-huh. Yeah. Fascinating," Marceline deadpans, and starts in again eagerly, "listen up, Bonnibel. I'm picking you up in ten minutes, got it? I know most of your wardrobe is pastel but c'mon, try for something a little more grungy tonight. Black. Torn. _Bloodstained_—"

"What are you _talking _about?" the monarch interrupts. She glances at the mirror again—her reflection frowns back at her. "Why are you picking me up? And"—she gives the receiver a tap—"why should I dress like a hobo exactly?"

"Rabid hobo," Marceline corrects. She hisses next, "Dude. I got _tickets_."

Bubblegum blinks, winding the phone's cord through her fingers. "Tickets? Tickets to wha—" The realization breaks over her like a wave in the next breath. She jerks, leaps to her feet: the phone line draws taut with a whine, straining harsh against the jack in the wall, and Bubblegum slaps her palm down on the bureau and shrieks, "You got _TICKETS_?"

Marceline repeats smugly, "I got tickets."

"But—but!" gasps the princess. "They've been sold out for _months_! MONTHS, Marceline!"

"Yep." The vampire chuckles.

"How did you—"

"Oh, you know. I might've killed a guy."

"_Marceline_!"

"He had it coming!" Ignoring Bubblegum's appalled splutter, the other monarch insists, "But seriously, Princess, ten minutes. I'm leaving now. Be ready. I'm not gonna stand around while you primp, get me?"

"Yes! Yes, of course—" For the second time in so many minutes a realization washes over Bubblegum. This one isn't even a fraction as pleasant as its predecessor, though, and the princess sags forward against her bureau with a whimper. "Marceline," she moans. "Wait. I can't go."

There is a pause, a moment of stunned silence that funnels through the phone's conical earpiece. It is broken by a horrific scratching, something like a fingernail on a chalkboard. Chasing said scratching with a blast of static that indicates blowing into the speaker, Marceline mutters, "Sorry, there must've been a few spiders stuck in the phone again. Because I thought I just heard you say you can't _go _and—"

Bubblegum groans, sinking her face into her palm. "I can't," she revisits. "You heard right."

Another pause. And then: "_What_." It's not a question. It's a snarl.

"I'm sorry, Marceli—"

"_WHY_." Cue louder snarl.

"There's a banquet." Bubblegum balls her hand into a fist. She punches said fist down into her vanity bench. It turns out this is a fairly stupid idea, because she doesn't know the first thing about punching and her fingers bend all different directions and pain throbs up her wrist. "Ouch," she observes, and goes on woodenly, "all the dignitaries from across the Kingdom are coming. In fact, most are already here and seated; dinner's in less than half an hour—"

"So what?" Marceline's tone tapers back to a sullen snap. "Ditch 'em!"

"I _can't_. Some of these people will use any excuse to bicker—"

"Bicker, _oh no_."

"—and my absence could be misconstrued as a grave insult! It… it could provoke war between the territories!"

Marceline scoffs, clicking her tongue, but her voice is pleading when she speaks again. "Bonnibel," she wheedles, "this is _CandyKorn_. One of the biggest bands in Ooo. I literally had to pry these tickets from a dude's cold dead hands…"

She trails off. Bubblegum bites her lip and they are quiet together, the two of them, until the princess ventures again, "I'm sorry, Marceline." She means it from the bottom of her heart, sure, but it still sounds lame.

Marceline mumbles in answer, sullen, "Did you even really wanna go in the first place?"

"Of course I did! I _do_! But—"

Something in Marceline's voice changes. It's slight, like the degree of difference between acute and obtuse, but Bubblegum's known the vampire queen a while and can't help but hear it. "You still wanna go?" Marceline asks.

"Yes. But like I said, I _can't_—"

"If you _could_," Marceline cuts in. Oh nuts, she sounds almost thoughtful. When Marceline tries to be thoughtful, people usually end up maimed. "If you could," she revisits, "you'd still wanna go?"

"Did I mention that these are all very _important _dignitaries?" Bubblegum presses. "Dignitaries without whose efforts my kingdom would crumble?"

"Bonnibel, your kindgom's already a crumble. Or a fritter. Or a cobbler… geez, I'm hungry—"

"Marceline." Bubblegum's fingers are tangled in the phone's cord. Shaking them, she asserts, "You may not eat my subjects. Or harm them at _all_. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah," dismisses the queen. "But c'mon, answer me, okay? If you could somehow get out of your stupid banquet dinner with all your precious dignitaries and stuff, would you still wanna go to the concert with me?"

"I would, but Marceline, let me reiterate this: I do _not _condone murder—"

"Man, you are _such _a high-maintenance girlfriend," Marceline grumbles.

Bubblegum stiffens as though having stepped on a pin. "I'm a what?" she whispers, her throat suddenly clogged and all full of cotton. "Marceline? I'm a _what_?"

_Click_. _Click-click-chitter_. The dialtone's whine fills her ear.

Marceline has hung up.

For a moment Bubblegum stabs the earpiece into her temple, hoping against hope she'll hear the vampire's voice whisper back to life on the line. The moment passes. The monarch's eyes heat. Her vision swims too, and her sinuses flood, and with a fierce, "Ooooh!" she slams the little cone back onto its hook, sniffling despite herself. "Oooooh," she hisses again. It sounds watery this time. "Jerk," she opines, digging her face into her hands. "Buttface! _P-picklesniffer_!"

"Majesty?" asks a timid voice.

Bubblegum looks up through her fingers with a shiver. Peppermint Butler is waiting at the door, his expression concerned, his tiny striped brows bent into a U. Twiddling his bowtie, he ventures, "Princess? Are you all right?"

Smearing her wrist over her eyes, Bubblegum sniffs. She puts on a brave face next and grants her faithful servant a smile. So what if it wobbles at the corner a little? He's nearsighted—he won't notice. "Yes," she affirms. "Is it time?"

"Everyone is assembled downstairs." The butler nods. "They are awaiting your arrival." Nudging one foot over her room's threshold, he hedges, "Are you sure you're all right? You look upset. And," he finishes, ginger, pointing to Bubblegum's crown, "your hair. It, ah…"

Bubblegum checks the mirror. Her hair is indeed lopsided. Blowing her breath out through gritted teeth, she urges her butler, "I'm fine. Tell them I'll be down in a moment, please." Once he's pattered off down the stairs, the princess scowls at her reflection and rubs away the lingering tear tracks on her cheeks.

Ten minutes later Bubblegum is seated at the fore of a massive table in the palace foyer, the Licoricewhip Lord looming at her left, the Lady Flan her wibbling right. One of them appears to be trying to engage her in a game of footsie and she isn't quite sure which of them is the culprit—honestly, she doesn't care. Pushing the food on her plate around with a dour fork, the princess tunes in partway to the conversations happening around her. Occasionally, because it's her duty to do so, she attempts to contribute an opinion.

"—but he's a Brittle! We of the Fudge family are disinclined to accept his policies—"

"You will accept his policies and be glad for them," Bubblegum interjects. "You are a representative of my kingdom and your actions should directly reflect my wishes. Since I do not tolerate discrimination, you will not dish it out. Is that clear?"

Eyeing anxiously the fork the monarch is now brandishing like a tiny three-pronged spear, the Fudge emissary nods and pipes, "Yes, Your Majesty!"

"Good." Rounding on her neighbor two seats down, Bubblegum tries her hand at civility this time and permits, "Mrs. Frosting, that is a _beautiful _headpiece. Where did you—oh. A case of the sprinkles? I'm… I'm terribly sorry! Oh no—oh, oh please don't _cry_, Mrs. Frosting, I didn't mean to—"

Bubblegum manages to commit three more terrible faux pas, one involving a guest's creamy discharge, before she finally determines to just sit still and shut up. Having no one with which to hold a stimulating conversation, the princess sinks deeper into the evening's depression. Time slows to a crawl. Not even the unveiling of a raspberry-chocolate fondue fountain is enough to cheer her.

She has begun to fold her napkin into an origami goose when a howl cuts through the foyer.

Bubblegum looks up immediately, eyes enormous. All around the table her guests mirror the motion, glancing at one another. Forks glisten midair, some still bearing bits of food. A tense, unwilling silence descends on the crowd. Even Mrs. Frosting has stopped sniveling.

"Was that a wolf?" asks Lord Licoricewhip eventually, fracturing the quiet. His twizzling mustache bristles with the question.

Anxious muttering breaks out among the dignitaries. "It most certainly was not," denies Bubblegum. "Wolves are rare this far into the Kingdom, as you all know—"

Another howl ripples through the foyer's open windows, followed closely by a third. A fourth. Lord Licoricewhip sweeps to his feet just as a great scratching starts up at the door.

"Everyone remain calm!" Bubblegum thunders. As a victim of several kidnappings over the past few years, she recognizes the signs of a siege.

Not three seconds later the door gives way under a furry phalanx of snarling, slavering wolves. Screams erupt from the dignitaries, who disregard their monarch's advice and scatter from the table like bowling pins on a kids-play-free night. Dishes fall, crash, shatter. Chairs collapse. Trampled by hundreds of little sugary feet and tugged by just as many hands, the tablecloth rips into confetti.

Most of the crowd, the wolves in hot pursuit, storm out through the foyer's broken door into the summer night beyond. A few of the smarter attendees sprint back into the palace corridors and bolt themselves into the bathrooms. Because the largest wolf of the invading bunch, a burly black beast, has leapt onto the table's other end and started toward her, though, Bubblegum herself remains affixed to her seat.

The wolf picks its way around dessert dishes and one half-eaten tin of pretzels—hey, even sugar-people get salt cravings now and then. In fact, the abundance of said salt is probably why none of the dignitaries have exploded yet. The wolf stops within snapping distance of the princess. Drops onto its haunches. Its forked purple tongue lolls from between its lips and Bubblegum gasps, "_Marceline_?"

With a soft _schlup _of shifting flesh the wolf melts into the far more familiar vampire queen. Rolling her shoulder back into its socket, Marceline agrees, "Yo, baby. Ready to go?"

The princess gapes. "You… _you_…!"

Marceline floats off the table's surface and slowly circles Bubblegum. She makes an amused clucking noise and fingers the frills of the monarch's ceremonial garb. "Dang! You're not wearing this, are you? We'll be laughed straight out of the joint."

"You," Bubblegum tries again weakly. She gestures to the ruined foyer: the muddy paw prints peppered over every surface. The shards of the dishes. The spilled food. The lingering wolves.

Marceline spares the room the briefest glance. "Oh yeah"—and she shrugs—"sorry about that. But hey, wolves don't eat sugar, right? So they'll just chase your peeps around a while. I even told them no biting." She adds, "I woulda been here sooner too, but it took kind of a long time to round up this many—hey!" Fisting handfuls of the mangled tablecloth, Marceline drags herself forward, shoves her face into Bubblegum's, and demands, "Are you _crying_?"

Bubblegum reaches up with a startled hand to pat the skin beneath an eye. Her fingers come away damp. Brushing helplessly at it, she manages, "It—uhm. It might be the wet dog smell."

Marceline's cheek twitches. Her fangs peep over her lip and she observes, slow, "Mmm-hm. You weren't expecting me to spring you tonight, huh? You thought I'd just go on to the concert without you." The last thing isn't so much a question as it is an accusation, and Marceline folds her arms.

Her throat dry and her eyes stupidly overflowing still, Bubblegum considers denying it. It's pretty hard to fool someone as old as Marceline, however, and the princess is a terrible liar anyway. "You said I was high-maintenance," she allows.

Marceline blinks: smirks. Reaching forward, she scrapes her cold hand down Bubblegum's cheek, too coarse to be careful. Clearing away the tears, she rubs them between her thumb and forefinger and murmurs, "Yeah. That's what these are about?"

Bubblegum hesitates. It's really too bad she's so sucktastic at fibbing. "I know I'm high-maintenance," she admits. "I mean, come on. I'm a freakin' princess. It… it was more," she hedges, "the other thing you said."

"What other thing?"

Marceline sounds so puzzled, so nutter-butter clueless, that Bubblegum's cheeks boil. Stomping her foot, she wheels to her feet and snaps, "_Girlfriend, _Marceline! You said I was your _girlfriend_!"

_Ticka-ticka-ticka_. _Wsssssst. _That's one of Marceline's wolfy pals discovering—and taking a piss on—an antique heirloom vase.

Marceline stares at Bubblegum. Her mouth works and no sound emerges at first, not really: just small rasps and half-whispers that don't quite make it into words. Her knuckles drag along the table's surface, scattering hors d'oeuvre. There is something new in the vampire's fiery eyes, something fleeting—Bubblegum recognizes it but hasn't ever seen it on Marceline before, and it takes her a moment to realize it's _vulnerability_, geez.

"Aren't you?" asks Marceline, so quietly Bubblegum has to strain to hear her. "Aren't you my girlfriend, Bonnibel?"

"Well we've never _talked _about it," the princess retorts, only it's not quite a retort because there's no sizzle to it. There's just Marceline hovering there staring at her, staring at her with those eyes so huge and _wounded _like c'mon, Bubblegum, how could you even think otherwise, and the smaller girl amends in a whisper, "You've never _asked _me."

"If you'll be my girlfriend?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Marceline tips her head. She grins. Just like that she's back to her normal smug self, and she plunges her hand into her back pocket and ferrets around until she comes up with what is unmistakably a pair of tickets. Holding them up like a truncated royal flush, she flutters them and queries, "Bonnibel Bubblegum, will you do me the honor of coming with me to this concert of epic proportions? As"—she takes special care to stress this part, it's obvious—"my _girlfriend_?"

All the vampire's buoyant flair and confidence do nothing to disguise the fact that her free hand is still fisted desperately in the tablecloth.

Bubblegum reaches to fold her fingers over Marceline's chilled knuckles. With her other hand she plucks away the rightmost ticket and determines, "When you put it that way, _yes_. Let's blow this joint." She beams, squeezing the other girl's wrist. "I'll just go upstairs and change and—"

"Nah, no time for that!" Marceline rolls backward. Seizing her own shirt's hem, she peels it up: pulls it off. Left thus in jeans, boots, and a black bra, the vampire thrusts the shirt at Bubblegum and urges, "Take off that bodice thing and put this on!"

Bubblegum begins to fumble at said bodice. "Help me untie it! What about the dress?"

"Meh, leave it. It'll pass for fairy grunge."

"There's such a thing?"

"Bonnibel, we're going to a rock concert. Of course there is." Bubblegum has only just stripped to the shell of her uppers when Marceline shimmies the shirt over her head. The vampire helps her pull it down. There's a graphic on the front, something like two skulls and a snake, but Bubblegum has no time to study it. Whipping the princess up into a cradle of arms, Marceline says, "We'll make it in time for the second set if we hurry," and soars through the foyer's splintered door.

Bubblegum clutches at her chauffeur. Overhead the stars gleam like a thousand torches all guttering together, and the princess swallows and squints into their glow and asks, "Marceline?"

"Yeah?"

"What about you?" Bubblegum chances.

"What about me?" volleys back Marceline, grinning down at her prize.

The princess nudges into the night's slow breeze, "Is that what _you're _wearing?"

Somewhere far down below a wolf howls, and Marceline laughs. Lowering her head to feather her mouth over Bubblegum's ear, she nips its rosy pink tip and husks, "Aw Bonnibel, c'mon. Don't be jealous. Rock concert, remember?"

"That is _not _fairy grunge," sulks the princess. And then, ginger: "Do that again."

"What?" Marceline's mouth slides lower, soft on her neck now. "This?"

Twisting slightly in the vampire's grasp, Bubblegum curls her hands in Marceline's hair and hauls her close to kiss her. She misses. When they show up for the concert an hour later there are bitemarks on Marceline's nose to prove it. People stare.

"Sorry," Bubblegum whispers to Marceline as they shoulder through the crowd toward the stage. "About the, you know. Nibbles."

"Shows I belong to someone," Marceline replies simply. She shrugs.

Bubblegum tightens her grip on the vampire's hand, though, and drags her near.

She doesn't miss twice.


End file.
